


Sugar in Your Coffee

by rixsig-writes (rixsig)



Category: Mystic Messenger (Video Game)
Genre: M/M, coffeshop au, how to confess when your crush is really hot and you have the self-confidence of a crumbling scone, zen as a barista
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-04
Updated: 2018-01-04
Packaged: 2019-02-28 05:17:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,408
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13264491
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rixsig/pseuds/rixsig-writes
Summary: Okay, so Yoosung might be going to this coffeeshop more often then he needs to be, but that's fine. And that beautiful barista there might be flirtier than he needs to be, but that's fine too. It's not like it's going to go anywhere....right?





	Sugar in Your Coffee

**Author's Note:**

> originally written a while back last year for the mm favorite memories zine! it was an excellent concept to work with

There’s an impossibly beautiful man that works at the coffeeshop just off campus, and somehow Yoosung is friends with him.

“Are you gonna stare at me or are you gonna study?” The beautiful man says, sitting on the other side of the small two-person table. He has his chin propped up in his hand and is gazing at Yoosung with obvious amusement in his strikingly red eyes, and bad train of thought, bad.

“Are you gonna stare at me or are you gonna work?” Yoosung parrots back, looking back down at his textbook with a smile. It’s open to the same page it’s been open to for the past half hour but how is he supposed to concentrate with Hyun, literal walking wet-dream, right there watching him?

“You know you’re the only one who stays this late on a Friday night. You’re the only customer I have to satisfy~”

And oh my god, it doesn’t help when he says things like that. Yoosung lowers his face closer to the textbook in an attempt to mask the fiery blush that overtakes it, but judging from the chuckle he hears he must not be very successful. He never knows whether he’s more pleased or pissed off to get this attention from him, honestly. He can never tell if Hyun just likes showing off and seeing him squirm or if there’s...you know...something there.

Probably not. Right? Someone like that wouldn’t settle for some random college student game addict who’s always on the verge of failing. There’s a million other, better people out there. Yoosung’s just a friend and Hyun’s just distractingly flirty, and Yoosung needs to get a hold of himself before he starts bending over backwards for this guy because he can already kind-of sort-of feel it happening.

“Can’t you stop talking for five minutes so I can study.” Yoosung mutters, kicking at Hyun’s foot underneath the table. Hyun’s chair scrapes backwards as he stands up.

“I’ll do you one better and let you study for thirty.” He says, with a tone that makes Yoosung look up in trepidation. “But only if you keep me company after close.” He leans down into Yoosung’s space and grins teasingly. “And only if you _really_ study.”

“How would you know?” Yoosung challenges.

“I’ll know when you when you come in after your exam looking like you’ve found out when your funeral is gonna happen.”

Yoosung rolls his eyes and pushes Hyun’s face away with his hand. Then the other bit that Hyun’s said registers. “W-wait, after close? That’s not, like...against the rules or anything, right?”

Hyun lets himself be pushed and straightens back up, muffling laughter into his hand. “Dude, it’s not that big a deal.”

“But...I don’t think the owner likes me very much already…”

“What, Jaehee?” Hyun says, eyes wide. “Why?”

“Well. I mean…” Yoosung fidgets. “She always tells me if I don’t shape up and study I’m never going to get anyone to date me.” What Yoosung secretly wants is for Hyun to reassure him that he is, in fact, extremely dateable. Instead Hyun snorts and somehow does it beautifully. It’s grossly unfair.

“Don’t worry about that,” Hyun waves off, “that’s just her way of showing she cares.”

“She doesn’t do that to you!”

“Are you kidding? You should see the way she scolds me when I go for a smoke.”

“You smoke?!” Yoosung’s nose wrinkles. But thank god, another flaw. Yoosung likes to stockpile them up so he remembers that Hyun’s an actual, breathing human instead of an untouchable mirage created to haunt him.

Hyun winces a little. “I know, I know. It’s a bad habit. I’m trying to cut back on it. Plus I’ve got to start taking better care of my voice if I want to make a living off it one day.”

Yoosung perks up. “You know, I still haven’t heard you sing.” He’s heard him hum and even whistle a little on the job but not full-out sing. It’s something Yoosung’s been intensely curious about ever since he heard Hyun say he wanted to become a famous musical theatre actor. But even his speaking voice is so nice to listen to, Yoosung doesn’t know how he’ll survive his singing voice.

“Maybe you will tonight~” Hyun winks.

_He’s probably like this to everyone._ Yoosung reminds himself as Hyun walks back behind the counter. _Don’t get your hopes up._

“Study!” Hyun calls out to him.

Yoosung snaps his attention back to his textbook.

_But you’re the only one he’s inviting to stay like this, right?_ Another part of him whispers.

 

* * *

 

Yoosung throws himself so hard into studying in an attempt to drown out his thoughts that he actually gets a surprising amount done, especially since, for once, Hyun is keeping to himself behind the counter. Then after a half hour or so Hyun locks the front door and Yoosung’s pulse skyrockets in nervousness. Officially alone with this guy he has a hopeless crush on? What the hell was he thinking? Yoosung’s going to be so obvious it’ll be embarrassing.

But then Hyun beckons him behind the counter and they talk and laugh and Hyun makes him little sample drinks in between cleaning things up, just making recipes up as he goes, some delicious and some so awful Yoosung has to force himself to choke them down, and Yoosung’s nervousness melts away like snow under the sun.

Yoosung is just so happy around him. When it’s just the two of them messing around like this, when Hyun does something so goofy like pretending to howl at the moon, it’s easy to forget that he’s the reason half the customers even come here in the first place.

If Hyun was one of his classmates...if he looked more like one of Yoosung’s friends from college he probably would have tried to ask him out already.

 

* * *

 

But even though he’s way too chicken to ask someone like Hyun out his feelings leak out of him like a broken faucet. Which is why next week sees him standing in front of the coffeeshop fifteen minutes before close holding a tupperware container of slightly misshapen cookies. He’s half tempted to just launch it into the trashcan and run away, but Hyun’s already spotted him through the windows and the cookies taste fine and that’s all that really matters, right?

Actually, no. They don’t just taste fine. They taste _great_.

Yoosung holds his head up high and marches in with an only marginally wobbly smile.

“Yoosung!” Hyun immediately calls from behind the counter, beaming. “I was beginning to wonder if you were standing me up this week.”

“Uh, no, I was just…” Yoosung holds up the container, addled just from that one look from Hyun. What was he talking about again? “Cookies! I was making some cookies!”

“Ooo~” He leans over the counter as Yoosung walks up. “I knew you liked to cook but baking’s new. Any special occasion?” Yoosung sets it on the counter, trying his best to match Hyun’s casual air.

“Not really. Just felt like it.”

Hyun’s hand inches towards the container as though Yoosung won’t notice, even though he’s clearly making a show of it. He pouts when Yoosung swats his hand away. “I don’t even get to see them?”

Yoosung fends off Hyun’s hand again and draws the container to his chest. “Nope.”

When Hyun gives a lazy third try, eyes sparkling with mischief, Yoosung just straight-up pins his hand down on the counter with his own and tries to glare sternly at him. “Hey!” Yoosung snipes. “You want to fight?” But he can only hold that glare for a second before his mouth twitches up and betrays him.

Hyun pushes up against Yoosung’s hand but doesn’t try very hard to dislodge it, teasing more than anything else. “Fight huh?” he says with a smirk. “I’m game if you are.”

Yoosung pushes back down and tries not to laugh, but that only make it worse, morphing it into a muffled giggle. It dies in his throat when he looks back up, Yoosung struck dumb by the closeness of Hyun’s eyes, the closeness of all of him. How far is he leaning over the counter now? Yoosung’s suddenly very aware of the warmth of Hyun’s hand, the ridges of his knuckles pressing into Yoosung’s palm.

His body almost sways forward by itself, but he gets a grip of himself just in time, snatching his hand back and straightening up with an awkward laugh. “Haha, but we probably shouldn’t make this place a warzone for real or else your boss will get mad at you, right?”

Hyun blinks as if emerging from a dream and then withdraws his own hand, shaking his head with a smile. “Are you still stuck on thinking she’s scary?”

“She knows Judo!” Yoosung exclaims, gladly throwing himself into the topic change. “She said she’s a black belt!”

“She told you that?” Hyun’s eyebrows raise.

“Is...is it not true?” Yoosung asks, suddenly uncertain. Maybe she really does dislike him and she was trying to freak him out…

“Oh, no it’s true. The first time we met she threw me on my ass. Flipped me right over her shoulder.”

Yoosung’s mouth falls open. “Why?!”

“Give me a sec to lock the doors and I’ll tell you.” Hyun winks, going around the counter and towards the front. It isn’t until Hyun turns back around again and gives him a look that Yoosung realizes he’d been staring after him.

“Like what you see?” Hyun puts his hand on his hip and spears him with an all too satisfied grin.

“Shut uuuup.” Yoosung whines in embarrassment. “I know you’re pretty. The whole world knows you’re pretty. You can stop bringing it up all the time.”

Hyun drops his pose and walks back over to the counter. “So I’m just supposed to ignore it when you’re staring at me?”

_You ignore it from everybody else,_ Yoosung doesn’t say.

“Y-yes.” Yoosung grumbles, crossing his arms as best as he can with the container of cookies still in hand.

“ _That’s_ not going to happen.”

“Then fine, I’ll stop doing it then!” Yoosung exclaims, exasperated.

Hyun pauses, looking like he’s weighing something internally for a second before he speaks again. “Are you sure you can?” His voice dips in a way that makes Yoosung’s stomach swoop. “Because you’ve kept looking at me like that since the first day you came in here.”

Yoosung’s brain jolts offline and then shudders back on at double-speed. The first day? There’s no way Hyun had noticed him on the real first day he came in; he hadn’t even talked to Hyun once. All he’d done was stare like an idiot and stumble through his order with another girl who worked behind the second register. There were plenty of people at the coffeeshop who stared like idiots at Hyun. That’s how he got the tip jar filled so high. That and his casually cheerful personality and his stunning smile and—

“You were looking at me a little like that, and then you got up to the front of the line and didn’t even know what you wanted so you ordered a plain coffee that you couldn’t even drink.”

“Wh—!?” Yoosung strangles out.

“And then you got a pastry too and almost dropped it twice on the way to the table.”

Yoosung is already putting a hand over his burning face with a mortified groan. Oh god, does this mean he even saw…?

“Then you _did_ drop it. And you picked it right back up off the floor and ate it.”

“Don’t judge meeeeee,” Yoosung moans, finally getting his vocal chords to work, “how much money do you think a college student has?! I can’t waste any food!” Not to mention he already spends a good chunk of his funds on LOLOL items…although that particular expense has gone down, diverted towards this coffeeshop he can’t convince himself to stop coming to.

But Hyun just laughs, not put off at all. “Don’t worry, I’ve eaten a lot worse things. But I really was surprised, I mean, it landed icing side down and everything…”

“Can’t we just talk about your boss again?” Yoosung says in desperation, “You still have to tell me why she flipped you when you first met!”

“Oh, right.” Hyun blinks. “Hmm...well do you mind if we save that for later? I’m on a roll with my favorite memories of you.”

“Favorite memories?!” Yoosung squeaks.

“Yeah. I have a lot of them, actually.” The mood gets heavy, Hyun’s eyes warm and serious on him, and Yoosung feels rooted in place. This hadn’t happened the last time he’d stayed over past close. Where’s...where’s the joking feeling? Is this real? How can this be real? Yoosung’s been trying to remind himself not to read into it, that this is all friendly banter, just Hyun liking to see Yoosung flounder, but this is...this is really starting to feel like…

“L-like what?” Yoosung murmurs, hands clutching hard on the container he’s holding like it’s a raft in a stormy sea.

Hyun steps closer. “Like that time I burst in twenty minutes late to my shift because of an audition and my stomach growled, and you just pulled out this giant bag of homemade trail mix from your backpack and gave me the whole thing without even thinking about it, like it was the most natural thing to do.” He pauses, and Yoosung would say it was for dramatic effect were it not for the sincerity dripping from every word. “You know...you were always my type, but that’s when I really started getting interested in you.”

Wait, his type?? Interested???? Yoosung’s head is spinning. What’s happening? “Well...you were hungry and grumbling about being sick of eating the pastries here, s-so…”

Hyun takes another step closer. “Or when you came in after that school presentation all dressed up and beaming...I thought my heart was gonna stop.”

_Oh my god_ , Yoosung finally realizes, _It’s real. It’s really real_. Hyun’s interested in him. And Yoosung has a chance? No, he’s _had_ a chance this whole time? Every time he’d thought Hyun might have been flirting, flirting specifically with him...that hadn’t been wishful thinking?

“These are for you!” Yoosung blurts in a rush, shoving the container at Hyun hard enough to make him wheeze. “And I have a lot of good memories of you too! Like when I was a dollar short so you just bought my stuff for me and said it was your treat and when you tried to help me study but you couldn’t pronounce half of the terms I was memorizing or when I accidentally fell asleep and I was gonna be late for an exam and you took your break right then and took me there on your motorcycle and—”

Yoosung stops to gasp for air for a second because now that the floodgates are open the words keep wanting to pour out of him ceaselessly. He’s just chock full to the brim with feelings, has been for _ages_ , and the sight of Hyun wide-eyed and flushing and a little bit lost only spurs him on. “I have so many good memories of you but I don’t think I could ever decide on any favorites because every time I think of one I think of five more and five more after that and I think just spending time with you doing anything would make another favorite memory for me, so—”

Yoosung breaks off and gulps, nervousness striking him again, but he clenches his fists and forges on. “So be my boyfriend?!” Yoosung asks, voice echoing loud in the empty coffeehouse. Immediately he starts backpedaling. “O-or maybe we could just go on a date sometime? Um…”

For a long moment Hyun stands there motionless, not even breathing. Then like a spell being broken his chest finally moves to inhale, and he turns his head to the side, a hand coming up to cover his face.

Oh god, did Yoosung mess it up already? Oh god, oh god, what did he do? How does he fix it? “Y-you don’t have to! Sorry, I’ve never asked someone out before. I don’t really know what I’m doing…” Yoosung wilts a little. Should he have waited until he could have brought flowers or do other guys not like things like that? He definitely should have said it smoother at least…

“Yoosung.”

Yoosung’s gaze snaps back up from where it had been trained on the floor, and he’s instantly arrested by the look on Hyun’s face, an intense sort of expression he’s never seen before. Is...is that good? Bad? Yoosung can’t tell. “I can try again! I mean—”

“Yoosung,” Hyun repeats with a rough voice, stepping in so close Yoosung’s brain goes offline again, “the first time was perfect.”

Then Hyun reaches out, cradles Yoosung’s face in his hand, and kisses him.

It only lasts a few seconds, but Yoosung is consumed by them, by just the soft and gentle press of Hyun’s lips. He swears when Hyun pulls away his mouth tingles, and he has to stop himself from masking it with his hand. He reaches out and curls his fingers into Hyun’s apron instead to steady himself.

“So that means...you will go out with me?” Yoosung asks hopefully.

Hyun breaks out into laughter, pulling Yoosung into a tight embrace. “Yeah. Yeah it does.” He lays a kiss in Yoosung’s hair and that tingles too, a shivery sensation right over Yoosung’s scalp. “I’ll go out with you tomorrow, and the day after that, and the day after that, and the day after that.” Yoosung bites his lip, heart pounding. It’s going so fast it might explode. He’d be doubting the realness of this moment too, but Hyun’s too warm and solid around him to be an illusion.

“So just four days, then?” Yoosung dares to tease. Hyun laughs harder and digs his fingers into Yoosung’s sides in retribution, making him yelp with ticklishness.

“No. I’ll date you every day you want me.” Then he pulls back, eyes gleaming. “And I’ll do my best to make sure you always want me.”

Tackling Hyun while trying to kiss him probably wasn’t the wisest thing Yoosung could have done in retrospect, but he hadn’t been thinking. And even now when they’re both on the floor with new bruises, the shattered remains of a potted plant fallen from the counter and scattered everywhere, they’re still the happiest they’ve ever been.

* * *

 

Epilogue

“I’m so, so sorry.” Yoosung apologizes for the fourth time.

“It’s fine, it’s fine.”

“But she was _mad_.”

“She was a little mad.” Hyun admits. “But if I get her a new plant for the counter I think it’ll blow over.”

“Really…?” Yoosung doubts replacing a plant is going to make up for finding your employee making out with someone on the floor of your coffeeshop, but well, Hyun knows her better than he does, right?

Hyun pries the lid off the container of cookies and peers inside, eyebrows scrunched. “It looks like a few crumbled from the fall, but most of them look alright. At least...is this what they’re supposed to look like?” He holds one up. It’s an indistinguishable, lumpy blob.

“Uh. Yeah…” Yoosung blushes. “I didn’t have any cookie cutters so I tried to do it by hand…” When Yoosung looks over again Hyun is already eating it.

Hyun blinks. “Holy shit, babe, this is delicious!”

Yoosung’s heart skips a beat. A p-petname…?

“Why do you sound so surprised?” Yoosung pouts, playing it up even though he knows he’s complained to Hyun countless times about failed cooking experiments. “I’m great in the kitchen!”

“Oh really? I’ll look forward to that then.” Hyun winks and then pulls another cookie out. He double-takes. This one is a bit more well-formed, and Yoosung goes an even darker red when he sees Hyun staring at it. “Is this a heart? Are these heart-shaped cookies?”

“Um. Maybe?”

“So you were planning to confess tonight too?!”

“Not really…”

Hyun stares at him in complete incomprehension.

“I was hoping you wouldn’t notice.” Yoosung mumbles, feeling like he’s going to die of embarrassment. But it’s worth it because then Hyun is kissing his temple, his burning cheek, his lips.

“One day I’ll make them better.” Yoosung says, catching his breath.

“Okay,” Hyun replies, “but the first time was still perfect.”


End file.
